When I bought and installed the mobile rack, the only option that worked was to use CS. Any other jumping and the computer didn´t boot, it didn´t detect the PM.

This sounds suspicious!

Do you have a proper Ultra ATA-capable 40 pin, 80 conductor cable with the blue (system board), black (master) and gray (slave) connectors? - if you are using a 'normal' (an all gray) ATA cable, then it won't work in ATA100.

Cable Select is known to be unreliable, so it is best not to use it - make sure that you have the proper ATA100 cable and then try jumper-ing the drives properly. I would try getting this right with only the Hitachi drive connected first - leave the others off for now.

Back tomorrow - I'm on GMT and it's 00:35 hrs! (I think Sweden must be on GMT+1)


Ian.  8)

Hi Christer.

'the computer doesn´t boot with any other jumping on the HDDs'

This is NOT right! Can you try another cable, as if the machine cannot boot WITHOUT using Cable Select then somethings definitely wrong! - there may be a setting in the BIOS to disable CS.

Try using a flat cable with the drive jumpered and propped-up inside the case, so as not to strain the connections - If the PC still will not boot then it looks like you have a hardware problem (cable, drive or controller) - you must get the PC to boot using the jumpers before you can sort-out the speed problem.

Let us know what happens!

Ian  8)

Hi Ian!

We were typing at the same time but You hit the button sooner!

Quote:

Oh YES, it is!

When doing the experimenting on Independent Device Timing, I tried all combinstions of hardware, cables and jumping. No matter which cable was used, the Primary Master was only detected if it was jumpered as Cable Select. It was not detected jumpered as Master or "Force Slave Present".
The reason for trying FSP was the empty rack connected to the Primary Slave (I had not yet taken delivery of the new HDD at the time).

Maybe I´ll sit down and think about it. The HDD that wasn´t recognized as PM was the 60GXP. Maybe the 7K250 is different?
I wouldn´t think so but OK, I´ll give it a try!

Christer

Ian,
while You were typing and posting, I was doing almost exactly as You suggest!

1)
I jumpered the 7K250 to Master and restarted the computer which booted OK.
Shut down and next, I removed the 60GXP physically from the rack and restarted the computer which booted OK.
Obviously there was something not quite right with the firmware on the 60GXP when that one didn´t boot jumpered to Master. (It only occured after connecting the empty rack to the Primary Slave connector.) The 60GXP has since received an updated version of the firmware but it will never again have an Operating System installed on it so, we will never know.

You were right that it was wrong but I was not wrong that it was right since it was a fact ......  ...... !

2)
I physically disconnected all drives apart from the 7K250 and booted from the Ghost Boot Disks and ran a check ......  ...... which was a slow as before, no change, not even a second quicker.

I did not dig out the old flat cable since I am 100% sure that there is nothing wrong with the ones that I use. Tried all combinations of hardware and cables when testing Independent Device Timing.

3)
Now on to the things I didn´t do:

Quote:

Doesn´t the DEVICE set it self to either Master or Slave, depending on which connector, when using Cable Select? I dont think that happens on the motherboard but I´ll shut down and restart to check.

Quote:

Since the 60GXP worked OK on IDE1 as the single HDD (Master) on that controller and it still works OK on IDE1 as Slave to the 7K250, I think that I know the result of trying to connect it to IDE2

Quote:

Well, that´s possibly the last stone to turn but it would mean getting down on the floor again ......  ...... !
Since I don´t believe that it will work, I will probably have to sit down and reassure myself that it should be done, just to rule out the last (?) possibility.

Quote:

The drive performs as expected when Ghost is out of the picture. The AIDA32 benchmarks indicate that.

It is only when running Ghost that the performance gets crippled!

I can rerun the benchmarks and save the screens to post here.

Christer

Hi Again Christer.

I only mentioned changing the cable to see if it was the cause of the CS/jumper problem - obviously it now works OK!

It would appear that unless you have a fragmentation problem, then it must be as you say - a problem with Ghost itself. (with a much larger cache the Hitachi drive should be noticeably faster)

I wish I could remember where I had a Ghost Error Report, but I last got one over a year ago, (when I started using Ghost) and I can't remember how to get one! The error report would at least confirm that Ghost is using DMA.

I'll do a bit more thinking!


Ian  8)

From one of my earlier posts:

Quote:

That was when C: on the 7K250 had been imaged.

The latest Image I created was of F: on the 60GXP.
Now, when the Images are checked, the 60GXP stalls whereas the 7K250 runns smoothly.

I have stared at the screen and have come to the conclusion that when the checking is still on the first span (*.gho) then it ticks on by the second but it starts stalling as soon as it gets into the second span (*.ghs)

......  ??? ...... Christer ......  ......

Christer I have just noticed something from your 'GhstStat.txt' post.

Ghost is not using the 'Extended Int13h ' access method.

Try running Ghost with the 'GHOST -FFX' switch.

Let me know if it makes a difference!


Ian  8)

Ian,
I´ve tried these combinations:

-ffx

-fni -ffx

-fnx - ffi

-ffi (which is the default Ghost choice of its own)

The only thing that happens is that one Active substitutes the other. No change in performance, though.

I think it´s time for a chat with Symantec Support. That will, however, have to wait a while because I don´t want to start it now and leave for a week of holidays on friday evening.

But when I get back ......  ......  ......  ...... !

Christer